Wednesday, December 30, 2015

2015 has been the year of artificial intelligence, robots and the Internet of Things. These phenomena all challenge the notion of physicality and locality. Having lived in
New Zealand for 24 years, I have come to appreciate the Maori concept of
‘whakapapa,’ that is introducing yourself, not by your credentials or
achievements, but where you come from.Where is your mountain.Where is
your river.Where is the place and who
are the people that brought you here and shaped who you are.

I grew up on a farm from
which we looked west into West Virginia and north across the Mason Dixon Line
to Pennsylvania.My mountains are the
Allegheny Mountains and my river is the Youghegeny River in Western Maryland.
In fact, I have only recently come to appreciate the beauty of these Native
American place names.There were others
too, like Monongehala and the Susquehanna rivers—beautiful names.More beautiful than the more general, more
common regional name of Appalachia.

My ancestors were once
immigrants like me.Anna Barbara Kolb
came from Germany to seek a better life with her two sons in the mid-1800s
and the Kolb family is still farming those acres. My Mom's family have Amish roots, who married my Irish grandmother. The county I was born in hasn’t changed very
much over the years, and it was a great place to grow up!We lived off the land in a culture that I
came to appreciate when I studied sociology at university.

The other significant
mountain in my life is Denali (‘The Great One’ or Mt McKinley) in Alaska.Climbing Denali, the highest peak in North
America, was a life dream, which gave me the confidence to pursue my other life
dream, which was getting my PhD.

The thing about climbing
Denali and running the Grand Canyon and working 20-28 day courses in the
Colorado mountains or the Chihuahuan Desert was that I have experienced
considerable, unadulterated isolation with minimal or no contact with the
outside world.Such experiences are so
rare today.

Let’s not become dis-placed, disembodied
cyborgs.My experience growing up on a
farm and leading people in wilderness environments has taught me the value of
keeping our minds and bodies connected. Sociologist Anthony Giddens talks about
‘deterritorialization,’ which refers to mediated and virtual environments lifting us out of our local place.The danger of
losing touch with place and our physical selves is not new, but it is one that
is increasing rapidly as more and more of our world becomes increasingly virtual.

The Maori custom of introductions beginning with a deep sense of place provides important context for human interaction. Perhaps we all should find ways to 'reterritorialize' ourselves, to the physical places that matter to us.Have a happy, connected New Year!

Connectivity underpins almost
every aspect of contemporary life.From
toddlers with tablets and texting teens to smartphone addicts and the Internet
of things, we are increasingly able to be connected anytime/anywhere.But, ubiquitous and near-constant connectivity
also comes with a price of fragmented attention, blurred work/non-work
boundaries, and even (ironically) social isolation. The democratization of
information and media is shifting power to the consumer of everything from
hotels to hospitals, amidst unprecedented threats to privacy and security.
Moreover, digitization, automation and machine-to-machine connectivity are
changing work and organizations, and disrupting extant business models.
Socio-technical theories have explained the interaction between humans and
machines in the past, but we need new ways to think about information and
computing tools that literally go with us everywhere we go. The conceptual and
practical challenges are great, but increasing connectivity also brings
extraordinary opportunities for news ways of working, innovative business
models that can succeed from anywhere, and enhanced personal performance and
well-being.

﻿

Introduction

Thank you all for being here today.

What some people won’t do for a glass of Goldie wine on a Tuesday
afternoon. J

As some of you may know, the tradition here at Auckland is to give this
lecture in academic regalia.I like the
tradition and my Cornell regalia, but the gown may have to go if it gets too
warm in here.

One more caveat on format.This
is an inaugural lecture, not an inaugural TED Talk and while I normally admire
and aspire to deliver TED-type talks, I can’t do that for 40 minutes, so if
you’re expecting a TED Talk, this will be twice as long and half as entertaining.
J

Before I begin, I would like to say a few words of thanks to those who
have played a role in my being here today. To Stuart for the cool title.To the Deans, Alastair (MacCormick), Barry (Spicer) and Greg (Whittred), all
of whom have encouraged and supported me in different ways over the years.

To the many great academic and professional colleagues within the
School, many of whom are here today.Thanks
for making this such a great place to work for nearly 24 years.To every teacher who put up with me in class,
thanks for your patience and encouragement! And, to my students over the years
who have challenged and also contributed to my understanding.

To my parents who encouraged me to go out and see the world, knowing
that I might not come back home. And, last, but certainly not least, many
thanks to my wife, Joline Francoeur, who pulled me back into the raft in the
middle of a rapid 36 years ago and who has helped keep me afloat in many ways
ever since.

It is an honour to be giving this inaugural lecture, not just as a Professor
of the Graduate School of Management, of which I am very proud, but as the
first Professor of Connectivity.I
imagine many of you are wondering what a professor of connectivity does.Some think I might fix their wireless router,
but I am not that kind of doctor. J In this talk, I hope to explain what this Professor of Connectivity
does.And, maybe inspire others to join
me in this emerging field.

But, first, having lived in New Zealand for 23 years, I have come to
appreciate the Maori concept of ‘whakapapa,’ that is introducing yourself, not
by your credentials or achievements, but where you come from.Where is your mountain.Where is your river.Where is the place and who are the people
that brought you here and shaped who you are.

I grew up on a farm in Western Maryland.My mountains are the Allegheny Mountains and
my river is the Youghegeny River. The significance of this place was that it was relatively isolated,
geographically and socially, but we had a strong connection to the land,
something I will return to later in this talk.

The other significant mountain in my life is Denali (Mt. McKinley) in
Alaska.Climbing Denali, the highest
peak in North America, at the age of 28 was a life dream, and it gave me the
confidence to pursue another life dream, which was getting my PhD.

The thing about climbing Denali and running the Grand Canyon and
working month-long wilderness courses in the Colorado mountains or the
Chihuahuan Desert was that I was fortunate to experience considerable isolation.Such experiences are rare today.I will also return to the importance of ‘solitude’
later in this talk.

So, these are some of the places and experiences I bring with me to
this place and time.Speaking of time,
maybe I should get on with the talk. J

Why connectivity?

You may wonder how I came to be interested in the subject of
‘connectivity.’Well, at the end of the
1990s, I was in the market for a new and ‘enduring problem’ to research. And,
so it occurred to me that New Zealand had this problem with distance, which
ironically seemed more pronounced after the World Wide Web and the tech boom of
the 1990s. I decided that ‘managing distance’ would be my ‘enduring problem.’So, I began reading the sociology of
globalisation and the organizational literature on ‘distance.’

A turning point, however, was when my friend Deb Shepherd said to me
after a research seminar I had given, ‘Distance is not a problem for most
people in the world.What about looking
at the positive side of connectivity?’And, that turn has made all the difference! Thanks, Deb!

While all social science disciplines are concerned with human connections,
there are three (3) landmarks in the
literature that underpin my work.These
are information theory, social network theory and structuration theory and its
variations.

In 1937, Claude Shannon, while a student at MIT, produced what has been
called the most influential Masters thesis of the 20th Century.
Published in 1938, it contained what we now call ‘information theory,’ the proposition that any and all data can be
expressed in binary terms, of zeros (0s) and ones (1s).Information theory made way for digitization,
which underpins, just about everything we experience nowadays. It is estimated
that a duodecillion, that’s 10 to the 39th power (1039),
zero/one switches take place every second of every day, but that figure seems
low to me. :-)

If information theory has created the digital world, the landmark that
has transformed our social world is network
theory.In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram
and others’ experiments demonstrated that it is ‘a small world after all.’Milgram challenged his students to deliver a
letter to a subject 1000 miles away using friends-of-friends.The average number of links was 6 and
therefore the popular notion of ‘6 degrees of separation’ was born.

A few years later, Mark Granovetter discovered that we get more and
better resources from those more distant and less well known to us.His article, entitled the ‘strength of weak
ties,’ basically explains how Facebook and LinkedIn work.While the power of Social Network Analysis is
debatable, networks are currently seen, not just as a way to find a job or a
place to eat, but as a metaphor of society (Castells, The Rise of the Network Society).

The third major landmark in the literature is the social construction of reality, which challenged functionalist
views of society and technological determinism.In my senior year at college, we read Berger and Luckmann’s book,
entitled The Social Construction of
Reality and it blew my mind!

Returning to the sociology literature years later I discovered Giddens’
structuration theory and it was slightly easier to understand, but also offers
a more compelling case for individual agency or choice in the face of
social structures (norms), something I believe is critical to living in a
connected world.In structuration, agency is intertwined (constrained and
enabled) with structure in a duality, a relationship that I also
found applicable to connectivity.

A related strand of thinking that is more specifically related to
connectivity is the evolution of our thinking about how we socially create
meaning through, around and with technology.The socio-technical school begin in Britain in the 1950s and advanced
through Barley and others’ work in the 1980s.Orlikowski, Scott, Barley et al have since reminded us of the importance
of the material attributes of technologies and we now have the ‘sociomaterial’
school of thought.

Essentially, the sociomaterial
view is that while society is still socially constructed, our
interpretations, enactments and sense making all involve, and are affected
(though not necessary determined by) the material attributes (including design,
functionality, look and feel) of the technology and anything in the material
world.In short, we humans make stuff up
in our heads, but the stuff outside our heads--and in our hands--still matters!

Based on these foundations,
I would now like to highlight four (4)
contributions that I having introduced to the literature, namely the: